About Sathya Sai Baba: There are no videos with actual footage of Sathya Sai Baba engaging in any sort of consentual & intimate behavior with anyone.

CONCLUSION: There is simply NO comparison between Nithyananda and Sathya Sai Baba whatsoever.

NITHYANANDA / SAI BABA: COMPARISON TWO:

About Paramahamsa Nithyananda: Nityananda admitted he was the person in the YouTube videos and admitted that the Tamil actress Ranjitha engaged in the behaviors recorded therein (Reference).

About Sathya Sai Baba: Sathya Sai Baba has never (ever) made any sort of admission to any sort of inappropriate behavior and there are no videos of the guru engaging in any sort of questionable behavior.

CONCLUSION: There is simply NO comparison between Nithyananda and Sathya Sai Baba whatsoever.

NITHYANANDA / SAI BABA: COMPARISON THREE:

About Paramahamsa Nithyananda: Official court cases were filed against Nityananda in India and Nityananda himself submitted a writ petition defending himself (01 – 02 – 03 – 04).

About Sathya Sai Baba: No alleged victim has ever filed (first-hand) a single court case against Sathya Sai Baba in India for any alleged acts of impropriety. Sathya Sai Baba has never (ever) had to obtain legal representation and has never (ever) submitted a writ petition defending himself. Furthermore, no basic police complaints have ever been filed first-hand against Sathya Sai Baba in India by any alleged victim (Reference).

CONCLUSION: There is simply NO comparison between Nithyananda and Sathya Sai Baba whatsoever.

Pittard & Priddy’s Absurd Nithyananda Comparisions:

The fact of the matter is that Barry Pittard and Robert Priddy are bitter and vindictive extremists who argue their case via conspiracy, speculation and homo-erotic self-projection. It is apparent that Pittard & Priddy are attempting to gain cheap publicity (the only kind they can obtain) for their blogs by writing about the highly-charged controversy surrounding Swami Nithyananda and Tamil actress Ranjitha.

Despite Pittard & Priddy’s desperate and frenzied attempts to smear Sathya Sai Baba and draw dubious comparisions with Swamiji Nithyananda and Swamiji Bhimanand, Sathya Sai Baba has never (ever) had a single police complaint filed against him by any alleged victim and not even one mother or father has come forward with a public grievance or court case in India alleging impropriety against the Guru.

Shiv Murat Dwivedi (alias “Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanandji Maharaj Chitrakootwale” alias “Rajiv Ranjan Dwivedi” alias “Karan Kumar Dwivedi”) received world-wide attention for a sex scandal racket in India that has been widely broadcast through international television, newspapers, magazines, online news sites and YouTube. The “fraud Godman” Dwivedi was accused of being a prostitution ring leader who used the name, form and fame of Shirdi Sai Baba to bolster his pseudo-guru reputation.

Although numerous media broadcasts correctly stated that Shiv Murat Dwivedi claimed to be a devotee of Shirdi Sai Baba, some unscrupulous journalists and writers have erroneously and falsely published that Shiv Murat Dwivedi was a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba. Shiv Murat Dwivedi was NOT a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, nor did Shiv Murat Dwivedi ever claim to be a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba.

The following two articles are sleazy media publications that falsely claimed that Shiva Murat Dwivedi was a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba:

Delhi: The latest godman in the Delhi police net, Swami Bhimanand, is worth almost Rs 500 crore and used to cater to high end clients.

The long, divine sounding name Ichchadhari Sant Bhimanand Ji Maharaj could not even save the godman from the long arm of the law.

Swami Bhimanand professed to be a devotee of Satya Sai Baba and among his thousands of followers boasted prominent politicians and bureaucrats. But on the side, he was running a sex racket for 10 years which the Delhi police busted last week.

“We will be booking him under MCOCA as his past has all the necessary ingredients,” said Delhi Police Commissioner HGS Dhaliwal.

The 39-year-old Swamin Bhimanand, whose real name is Shreemurath Dwivedi, started work in Delhi as a security guard in 1988. In 1997 he was arrested for managing a prostitution ring. When he got out of jail, he took up religion simply as a front to his sleazy dealings.

He used to supply women, including air hostesses, to high end clients all across Delhi and used to earn approximately Rs 2.5 lakh everyday.

When produced in court on Wednestday, the godman of course denied all these charges.

“I have been framed. All allegations against me are false,” the swami said.

But police have recovered five diaries from him which have the names, phone numbers and even rates of certain prostitutes.

Sources say Swami Bhimanand had a very wide network of pimps and prostitutes and was worth more than Rs 300 crore. The police now wants to take him on remand to know more about his dealings and also about the politicians whose patronage he always enjoyed.

A Hindu clergyman and self-styled “god-man” with over 100,000 reputed followers in India has been caught running a US$10 million high-end prostitution racket involving British Airways hostesses.

Shiv Myra Dwivedi, aka Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale, 39, claims to be a follower of the legendary Sathya Sai Baba. Dwivedi was allgedly using his Sai Baba Temple in Khanpur, South Delhi as a front for an operation that employed somewhere between 60 and 200 prostitutes across India. Also found inside Dwivedi’s temple were drug and pornography caches on an epic scale. Adding to the fun, it appears that phone records found inside the temple link the prostitution operation to prominent Delhi cops, Indian television stars and politicians.

The Indian press is already calling Dwivedi the “pimp guru.”

The operation of the “pimp guru” employed mainly students and air hostesses, including British Airways and Jagson employees. Dwivedi was arrested over the weekend by Delhi police while conducting a deal with another (alleged) pimp behind a cinema in the city’s Saket neighborhood. A police team sent to raid Dwivedi’s temple subsequently found a labyrinth of hidden tunnels and rooms that contained personal diaries, cash, financial records for the operation and healthy supplies of pornography and undisclosed illegal drugs. According to Delhi authorities, the Swami hid the entrance to the secret tunnels in a meditation room.

The “pimp guru” also runs a 200-bed hospital and has several power political patrons in the Samajwadi Party and reportedly has several well-known politicians among his clients.

But for all of Dwivedi’s religious trappings, his pimp skills seem defiantly old-school:

“He used the guise of spirituality to run an organised prostitution racket since 1999 and has made billions of rupees by supplying women to his high-profile clients,” said a police officer, refusing to be named.

“He would force young women to join the sex racket, offered them money, expensive gifts and had even provided them with cars.”

Apart from the Delhi temple, the prostitution operation also rented out of several rented houses in Delhi and in the state of Uttar Pradesh. According to Indian sources, his non-Indian prostitutes would dress only in saffron clothes in public to avoid suspicion.

Dwivedi, a native of Uttar Pradesh, worked his way up from a security guard at a massage parlor in the 1990s to become a prominent guru. But he had trouble along the way: Dwivedi was previously arrested in 2000 for running a prostitution ring centered around yoga and meditation workshops.Strangest of all, reports indicate that Dwivedi’s father and brother were previously arrested on unrelated murder allegations in his hometown of Chitrakoot.

Needless to say, there are several YouTube videos that provide actual footage of Shiv Murat Dwivedi posing in front of pictures of Shirdi Sai Baba, NOTSathya Sai Baba. See for yourself:

In the following YouTube video, one can see Shiva Murat Dwivedi performing his “snake dance” in front of a Shirdi Sai Baba picture. The news broadcast also stated that the fraud Godman Shiv Murat Dwivedi pretended to be a devotee of the Sai Baba of Shirdi. Dwivedi also sold CDs and DVDs of himself in direct association with Shirdi Sai Baba.

When news broadcasts stated that Shiva Murat Dwivedi claimed to be a devotee of Shirdi Sai Baba, people dismissed Dwivedi as a fraud with no suspicions of impropriety against Shirdi Sai Baba. However, when news broadcasts incorrectly and falsely stated that Shiva Murat Dwivedi claimed to be a devotee of Sathya Sai Baba, people suggested and implied impropriety against Sathya Sai Baba!

On Robert Priddy’s Anti-Sai WordPress blog, he wrote an article about V. Ramnath and claimed matter-of-factly that Sathya Sai Baba personally“invited” him to india on three separate occasions. Needless to say, Robert Priddy is shameless distorting the truth, is obviously suffering from delusions of grandeur and is attempting to deceive gullible and naive readers into thinking that he had some sort of unique and personal relationship with Sathya Sai Baba (he did not).

robertpriddy.wordpress.com/2008/09/17/1248/
“Ramnath makes untrue assumptions: I was actually invited by Sathya Sai Baba to go to India several times – including the first time, and – as the Coordinator of the Sathya Sai Organization – to attend his EHV course in 1987 and come to his 70th Birthday too.”

Sathya Sai Baba never personally “invited” Robert Priddy to visit him in India on three different occasions. These are blatant untruths that can easily be refuted by sourcing material from Robert Priddy’s Pro-Sai book “Source Of The Dream”.

ROBERT PRIDDY’S FIRST TRIP TO SEE SATHYA SAI BABA:
How exactly did Sathya Sai Baba “invite” Robert Priddy to India the first time? In the chapter “Sai Answers A Call”, Robert Priddy said he wrote a letter to the Guru expressing a desire to see him in his “earthly incarnation”.

A friend of Priddy’s was to travel to Puttaparthi and took Priddy’s letter with him to India. When Priddy’s friend arrived at the ashram, he was told that Sathya Sai Baba was in Madras. However, the friend took Priddy’s letter with him “on an impulse” to bhajans and Sathya Sai Baba happened to arrive at that time. The Guru made rounds and took Priddy’s letter from his friend. That’s it!

Sathya Sai Baba never said one word to Robert Priddy or his friend that he should come to India. Since Robert Priddy currently contends that Sathya Sai Baba is a fraud, then Sathya Sai Baba taking his letter had no actual significance and did not constitute an “invitation”.

ROBERT PRIDDY’S 1987 TRIP TO SEE SATHYA SAI BABA:
Robert Priddy also alleged that Sathya Sai Baba personally“invited” him to an EHV course at Prashanti in 1987. Once again, Sathya Sai Baba never personally “invited” Robert Priddy to the EHV course at Prashanti in 1987.

In the chapter “The Rat In The Drum”, Robert Priddy narrated the entire story about his trip to Prashanti in 1987. Since Robert Priddy was turning 50 years old, he felt he needed to make a pilgrimage. Robert Priddy asserted that after chanting the Gayatri mantra in Norway, he would see gulls and various birds flying “without exception in the very direction of Puttaparthi”! After praying for “higher confirmation” and sending Sathya Sai Baba a “mental telegram”, he was convinced that Sathya Sai Baba answered his prayer after he rang his travel agent who said there was “no problem” and that he could wait “another week or so” before booking his flight (when earlier the same travel agent insisted he pay for the tickets within 24 hours). That’s it!

Sathya Sai Baba never said one word to Robert Priddy about coming to India to attend the EHV course in 1987. Since Robert Priddy currently contends that Sathya Sai Baba is a fraud, then the entire incident with the travel agent had no actual significance and did not constitute an “invitation”.

ROBERT PRIDDY’S TRIP FOR THE 70TH BIRTHDAY CELEBRATIONS:
Since Robert Priddy’s book was published before Sathya Sai Baba’s 70th birthday celebrations, one can only conclude that his visit to Prashanti for the 70th birthday celebrations was similarly based on “signs” he thought he received from the Guru. This is not surprising considering that Robert Priddy claimed he had a psychic telepathic connection with Sathya Sai Baba.

These are the typical types of exaggerations, embellishments and bold-faced untruths that Robert Priddy tells on almost a daily basis on his WordPress blog. Amusingly, Robert Priddy denies he has told a single lie. Since Robert Priddy and Ex-Devotees have miserably failed in their apathetic attempts to bring Sathya Sai Baba to “justice” in the past 10+ years, they resort to smears because the truth does not argue in their favor.

Bill Aitken is Scottish by birth, a naturalized Indian by choice. He studied comparative religion at Leeds University and then hitch-hiked to India in 1959. He has lived in Himalayan ashrams, worked as secretary to a maharani, freelanced under his middle name (Liam McKay) and undertaken miscellaneous excursions – from Nanda Devi to Sabarimala – on an old motorbike and by steam railway. William McKay Aitken has written on travel and tourism for newspapers, journals and magazines in India for several years and is the author of:

The Nanda Devi Affair

Riding The Ranges: Travels On My Motorcycle

Footloose In The Himalaya

Meeting The Mountains

Sri Sathya Sai Baba – A Life

Exploring Indian Railways

Divining The Deccan: A Motorbike To The Heart Of India

Branch Line To Eternity

Travels By A Lesser Line

Touching Upon The Himalayas: Excursions And Enquiries

Seven Sacred Rivers

Speaking Stones: World Cultural Heritage Sites In India (Supported by the Department of Tourism, Government of India)

Bill Aitken has written insightfully, reasonably and succinctly about the Sathya Sai Baba Controversy in his book “Sri Sathya Sai Baba – A Life”. The following paragraphs are extracts from this book along with comments from Joe Moreno (A Pro-Sai Activist).

Bill Aitken: The most glaring shortcoming of the rationalists is his habit of leaving love out of the equation. Their approach is cerebral and misses out on ordinary human emotions. The rationalists use Sai Baba to attack what is in fact their main enemy – the freedom to cherish the world of the spirit. Reading the abuse they heap on the Puttaparthi teacher, it seems that they are not so much incensed against him as at the poor who flock to his gatherings. Their claim to act in the interest of the common man sounds hollow when they display so much contempt for the villager’s preferences.

My Response: Indian rationalists are notorious for their fanatic and extremist tactics involving deceit and theatrics to influence and convert poor Indian villagers to their atheistic beliefs. For example, in the GuruBusters Documentary (View Video) an innocent dog was subjected to a bite from a venomous snake and an alleged ‘witch doctor’ was produced who said he could cure the dog using mantras. The ‘witch doctor’ failed, instantly embraced rationalism, denounced his trade as a farce and told the crowd they should convert to rationalism and not believe in religion, mantras or gurus. To the educated eye, the entire drama was an unconvincing set up (with a disgusting and brutal killing of an innocent dog). Nevertheless, to the uneducated Indian villagers, it was a convincing performance.

Bill Aitken: Besides the rationalist critics there are those who can be called irrationalist. These follow a well-known pattern in the history of religion where an overenthusiastic disciple turns apostate and, in a bewildering reversal of emotions, denounces as Satan the very person he had the day before declared to be God. The best example of this neurotic behaviour is St. Paul who started his career as an enthusiastic Jewish prosecutor of Christians. (It is an irony that the first Christian missionary gave his church its first martyr when Paul had St. Stephen stoned to death.) There is a discernable pattern of behaviour of the Puttaparthi malcontents. First the guru builds them up, gives them a front-row seat to make them feel they are part of the ashram inner circle and generally showers attention in their direction. Then, assured of their love, the guru starts the work of demolishing their unreal self. They are now ignored, made to sit at the back and generally cut to size. The easy way out is for them to look for another guru who may be more responsive to the sensitivity of their souls. Alternatively, the indignant disciple writes a book damning the guru for his blindness in not recognizing the spiritual gold that lay concealed in the rejected ego.

My Response: Bill Aitken is not the first person (and undoubtedly will not be the last) to recognize the fact that there is a “discernable pattern of behaviour of the Puttaparthi malcontents”. Ex-Devotee’s malicious behavior is actually a documented behavioral phenomenon that Bryan Ronald Wilson (Emeritus Professor) described as The Apostate Syndrome. Many Ex-Devotees praised Sathya Sai Baba as God Incarnate and the Avatar of the Age for many years. Now, however, they condemn him as an obvious fraud, a lousy magician, a poor speaker, a stupid person, a man engaging in public displays of transvestitism (Ref), a guru who is demented and senile, a sex addict who engages in inappropriate sexual behavior in front of thousands of devotees while being recorded on video (Ref), etc. (the list of slurs and defamations are too numerous to list).

Therefore, academic scholars and sociologists (such as A.D. Shupe, Jr., D. G. Bromley, Joseph Ventimiglia, Danny Jorgensen, James A. Beckford, Bryan Ronald Wilson) have recognized the Apostate Syndrome and Atrocity Story as behavioral patterns prevalent among former followers of a particular religion, sect or guru. Ex-Devotees are no exception and their maliciousness, extremism and fanaticism confirms the observations and arguments made by these academic scholars and sociologists.

Bill Aitken: Another disenchanted western devotee David Bailey, a musician from Britain, later used the Internet to try and discredit Sai Baba and his movement. Both Brooke and Bailey allege improper conduct but do not produce any evidence other than hearsay from other disgruntled disciples, many of whom hide behind a pseudonym on Bailey’s web site.

To Date:Not even one alleged victim has ever attempted to file a basic police complaint or court case against Sathya Sai Baba in India. Nor have any alleged parents to any alleged victims filed basic police complaints, public grievances or court cases in India for the alleged sexual molestations of their children. These facts strongly solidify the argument that Sathya Sai Baba never abused children (Ref).

It is entirely true that the allegations against Sai Baba are nothing more than internet smear campaigns waged by people (mostly pseudonymous and anonymous) who are so unconvincing, even money-hungry lawyers refuse to represent them. Alleged victims have been unable to obtain legal representation in the past 10+ years despite: 1) The lucrative prospect of a successful suit and; 2) Ex-Devotee’s constant claims that they are in correspondence with “International” and “Top” lawyers.

Bill Aitken: Brooke relies on an unidentified Anglo-Indian boy who, being a poor Christian, could be a paid informer of the missionary lobby. (One paperback edition of Lord Of The Air bears a missionary imprint.) As Whitefield’s young Anglo-Indians have no occasion to frequent the ashram, this boy must have gone to hobnob with the foreigners. The ashram rules – which Brooke breaches – caution devotees (with an almost prophetic insight in this instance): ‘Do not consort with strangers. They are likely to have ulterior motives, leading ultimately to unpleasantness.’

My Response: The only problem with all of Tal Brooke’s tall-stories is that none of the alleged witnesses he cited (who have never been identified as real people) have ever come forward in 30+ years to corroborate his stories. As it turns out, Tal Brooke’s alleged experiences with Sathya Sai Baba (and his subsequent defection) revolved around hallucinogenic and psychedelic drugs (mostly LSD) he was experimenting with at the time (Ref). Tal Brooke is also a fundamentalist Christian who believes that everything non-Christian is either a conspiracy or the work of the Devil. Therefore, Tal Brooke’s objectivity is severely compromised by his religious fundamentalism and extremism.

Bill Aitken: Bailey’s whole case self-destructs when, recognizing his inability to discredit Sai Baba’s reputation by salacious innuendo, he launches into a general tirade, farcical in the wildness of its allegations, against the ashram and its workings: Sai Baba’s vibuthi, he asserts, is prepared in capsule form to dupe the public. But even allowing for the possibility that Bailey is the only discerning witness among half a million fools, how does it explain the copious outpouring of vibuthi at Shivaratri before huge crowds, all of whom cannot be as stupid as he implies. The orchestrated malice of his fulminations sound as overdone as a Victorian missionary’s denunciation of the heathen. Both Brooke and Bailey revealingly revert to the vocabulary of the evangelist, accusing their target of having supped with the devil. This is quite common among the innocents abroad and I recall the visit of a famous British Catholic monk, in Mirtola, whose first impressions of the temple arati ceremony convinced him he was in Hell, listening to (and recognizing) the rites of Satan. What is amusing in all these foreign reactions to culture shock is the implication that the visitors have a close working knowledge of the devil’s tastes!

My Response: An excellent summation about David Bailey by Bill Aitken.

Bill Aitken: Like the stray rationalist voices, what these isolated critics are really saying is that they are the only reliable witnesses and that Sai Baba’s thirty million followers are all simpletons. Such overkill reveals the familiar scenario of an unbalanced believer who, unsure of his moorings, takes on a guru to bail him out of his confusion. Religious hatred is a sign of misguided energies and this may explain why followers who turn apostate invariably express their frustration through sexual innuendo.

My Response:Former Followers of Sathya Sai Baba have a nasty habit of sexualizing everything pertaining to Sathya Sai Baba, Sai Devotees and Sai Proponents. This deviant and perverse sexualization of Sai Baba is a highly prevalent tactic employed by former followers (even with absurd claims that Sai Baba is engaging in questionable sexual acts in full view of thousands of devotees while being recorded on video). For example, see the edited Ex-Baba movie clip entitled Sai Baba Groin (approximately 950kb, wmv file). Ex-Devotees have also maliciously accused Joe Moreno of being sexually abused by Sathya Sai Baba despite his many repeated clarifications to the contrary (Ref). Both Robert Priddy and Sanjay Dadlani allege that Sathya Sai Baba is a homosexual drag queen who openly engages in acts of transvestitism (Ref).

Ex-Devotees (who always boast about their moral supremacy) completely ignore Sanjay Dadlani (a vocal Ex-Devotee) and his homosexual-fantasizing slurs, perverted Jesus-sex fetish and deviant boot-sex fetish. Sanjay Dadlani secretly stalked innocent women at Middlesex University (calling them “bitches” and “sluts”, saying “they want it”, calling Mothers “MILFs”, photographing females and teenagers up their dresses and under tables and published these photos on his streetbitches blog). This is the type of person that Ex-Devotees (including Barry Pittard and Robert Priddy – two of the main spokespersons for the Anti-Sai Movement) publish, promote, link to and endorse.

These are the types of self-righteous pseudo-moralists attempting to take a moral and ethical stand against Sathya Sai Baba.

Bill Aitken: Throughout history every religious teacher worth the name has been the target of some avenging group and the easiest way to cast doubt on a holy person’s character is insinuate deviant sexual conduct. This is the price teachers pay for insisting on the celibate life, though it should be noted that even Gurdjieff, who had no sexual hang-ups, was targeted. Instead of being sympathetic to a guru who gives up the comforts of family life to teach mankind, and make allowance for his inevitable physical loneliness, society sanctimoniously criticizes any apparent deviance from the path of sacrifice. Christ was accused of consorting with drunkards and prostitutes and, like Ramakrishna Paramahansa, alleged to have homosexual proclivities.

My Response: Excellent points by William Bill Aitken.

Bill Aitken: Unlike the famous contemporary guru Amritananda Mata who expresses her love by hugging everyone who comes for her darshan, Sathya Sai’s strict distancing of himself from any human, and particularly female, touch is well vouched for. As with all holy figures who make a point of such segregation, vulgar rumors will ignore the practical precautions necessary in a mass gathering and assume that there must be some hidden homosexual preference. To silence such rumour is hard in a world where the priesthood of religions constrained by the vow of celibacy too often falls short of its proclaimed ideal. Hinduism is the only religion with the wisdom to perceive that sex must be a matter of taboo not because it is profane but because it is too sacred a mystery for idle talk.

My Response: One must remember that all interviews given by Sathya Sai Baba originate from public darshans (in front of thousands of people, trust members, security officers, VIPs and innumerable other high ranking witnesses). Is this the probable course of conduct for a sexual abuser, i.e., to call his victims in front of all these potential witnesses? It is also a customary practice in ashrams in India for women and men to be separated. This custom is not exclusive to Sathya Sai Baba or his ashram.

Bill Aitken: Both Brooke and Bailey plead that their innocent belief has been abused by Sai Baba. By closing their eyes to the reality that every new disciple is fussed over and thereafter conspicuously dumped (for four years in the case of Diana Baskin and her husband), they have only themselves to blame. Sai Baba never invited either to Puttaparthi nor did he ask them to become his disciples. He did not promise them life after death if they made a contract with him to be their saviour. They came of their own free will. When he gave them importance they called him God. When he transferred that importance to others they called him Satan. Half a century of daily practice at Puttaparthi should have warned them of what to expect had they not shut their eyes to everything except their own self-importance. Bailey now admits he finds no need for external gurus which means that Sai Baba did manage to get one critical teaching across. Howard Murphet notes in his latest book that the fallout from these publications has had the salutory effect of purging Prashanti Nilayam of other doubters, hangers-on and the merely cautious.

My Response: These are entirely valid points by Bill Aitken.

Bill Aitken: R.K. Karanjia, the editor of India’s then most populist and outspoken weekly, Blitz, who could be expected to pour scorn on Sai Baba’s mission, was completely bowled over by Baba’s presence and then went to the other extreme by claiming, “God is an Indian”. There is a clue here as to why Sathya Sai’s success has earned a bad press abroad. In all the adverse reports the common thread is phobia, a fear that Sai Baba’s supernormal powers prove he is a bogeyman. To aggravate these often racist feelings of the international press is the economic reality that in the West, where church funds are declining, the newcomer Sai’s mission is attracting high-profile donors. Envy at such spiritual success is another reason behind the critics’ wanton downplaying of Sathya Sai’s true spiritual status.

Barry Pittard (one of the main spokespersons for the Anti-Sai Movement) also expressed envy at Sathya Sai Baba’s spiritual success in a public letter he wrote expressing the hope that critic’s internet smear campaigns would impact donations to the Sai Organization (Ref).

Bill Aitken: A being with greater reserves of compassion, on entering the human body, has to accept both the severe scrutiny his message will attract and the guarantee that his body is susceptible to all the complaints that the flesh is heir to. As the fare provided by newspapers shows, most readers prefer scandal, violence and calamity to the arts of peace and the balm of the spirit. Sathya Sai has brought life to over a thousand thirsty villages in Rayalseema but no journalist will think it worth his while to spread the word about the historic dimensions of this unique act of charity. However, just one murder in the ashram will bring hordes of press persons keen to revive the mood of the ancient blood sport of throwing Christians to the lions.

My Response: Bill Aitken hit the nail squarely on the head with these comments. However, the Rayalseema project was just the tip of the iceberg.

Sathya Sai Baba also funded several major drinking water projects. The first drinking water project (completed in 1996) supplies water to 1.2 million people in 730 villages in the drought-prone Anantapur district in Andhra Pradesh. The second drinking water project, completed in 2004, supplies water to Chennai (formerly known as Madras) through a rebuilt waterway named “Sathya Sai Ganga Canal”. The Chennai water drinking project was praised by Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, M Karunanidhi. Karunanidhi said that although he is an atheist, he differentiated between good spiritual leaders like Sathya Sai Baba and fake godmen. The third drinking water project, expected to be completed in April 2006, would supply water from the Godavari River to half a million people living in five hundred villages in East and West Godavari Districts. Other completed water projects include the Medak District Project benefiting 450,000 people in 179 villages and the Mahbubnagar District Project benefiting 350,000 people in 141 villages. In January 2007, the Sri Sathya Sai Central Trust revealed that it would undertake another drinking water project in Latur, Maharashtra (Refs: 01 – 02 – 03 – 04).

Bill Aitken: When an internal ashram murder did rock Puttaparthi in 1993, Sathya Sai himself summed it up as the fruit of envy. However, this did not prevent the press from having a field day in wild speculation and inventive reporting. A study of the press clippings in the wake of this sensational case must make any professional journalist wince at the shoddy amateurism and cheap innuendo that emerges. If the ashram ever needed a case that it had been right to keep the press at bay, here was the best evidence for it. Some raw young reporter would turn up at the ashram campus, announce that the devotees were observing a ‘conspiracy of silence’ and then from this silence deduce the most ludicrous, unsubstantiated story.

My Response: For a list to some of these newspaper clippings, click here. The Sai Organization had to send emails to all Sai Centers to quash the rumor that Indian newspapers had initially reported that Sathya Sai Baba was assassinated. There are numerous articles that discuss the 1993 police shootings and the absurd and contradictory conspiracy theories dispersed by Anti-Sai Activists (Refs: 01 – 02 – 03 – 04).

Bill Aitken: It seems that four of Sai Baba’s own security detail broke into his living quarters (attached to the temple) late at night. Armed with what looked like home-made knives, they murdered Baba’s favourite aide and another student who came to his defence. The four then went upstairs apparently to confront Sai Baba to apprise him of their grievances, slashing everything in their way, but they fell back when Baba ordered them to go. By now the alarm had been raised since senior students were sleeping outside the temple. Baba was rescued by his students and lodged safely in a temple storeroom. Even as he sat on a bag of rice, someone remarked on how he had been betrayed by his own inner circle. Sathya Sai, pointing to the sack, said that only a few grains of rice were bad. At the height of the trauma he still had compassion for the killers.

My Response: The four assailants viciously murdered two Sai Devotees by repeatedly stabbing them to death with home-made knives. They also stabbed two other Sai Devotees who survived the attack. Critic’s conspiracy theories about the 1993 police shootings reveal how little they know and how much they relied on speculation, conjecture and gossipy rumors from anonymous sources.

Bill Aitken: The local police had been summoned in the meantime and climbed up to Sai Baba’s quarters where the four murderers had locked themselves in. Sathya Sai had sounded off an alarm that had been fitted to warn the ashram of any Naxalite threat which had seemed imminent at one time. This aroused the villagers who came armed with sticks to swell the crowd of devotees whose mood had turned volatile on hearing that Sathya Sai was under siege. Not known for their sophisticated response to delicate situations, the local police did what most local police anywhere in India would do – they opened fire on the attackers. A panel of the door behind which they had been hiding had been knocked out by rifle butt and, according to the police, they fired in self-defence after the murderers came at them with knives. All four were killed. Two of the conspirators got away on motorbike and these (who were later apprehended) are thought to be the masterminds behind the attack. However, Sai Baba never brought charges against them and the case lapsed. The press read something sinister in the avoidance of a long-drawn-out legal remedy, overlooking Sathya Sai’s prime concern that the families of those involved (most of whom are his devotees) should not be further afflicted.

My Response: This is an accurate and objective summation of events by Bill Aitken. It is also important to point out that although Sathya Sai Baba expressed concern and compassion for the families of those involved, Ex-Devotees maliciously and deceptively published pictures (in true tabloid-like sleazy style) of these families’ dead sons laying in pools of blood for the world to see. Ex-Devotees care less for the aggrieved mothers and fathers who must now endure the anguish of seeing their sons’ lifeless bodies cheaply broadcast on the internet like entertainment news. Ex-Devotees ceaselessly parrot the claim that Sathya Sai Baba is “implicated” in “murders” although they cannot back up this bold-faced untruth with any credible or legal documentation.

Bill Aitken: To swell the chorus of these abrasive critics, who saw it as their life’s mission to humiliate Sathya Sai and find under his fairy prince image an ugly frog, was Dr Narasimhaiah, the head of a rationalist organization supposedly humane in it instincts yet impudent in its demands that any free citizen should submit himself unreservedly to is self-styled committee for scrutiny. As the vice chancellor of Bangalore University, Dr Narasimhaiah may have thought that the dignity of his office would lend support to his witch-hunt in the name of encouraging the scientific temper. In fact, the VC used the imposition of Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency (which curtailed democratic rights and encouraged petty tyrants) to set up his handpicked committee which, with maximum press publicity, drove in two buses to the Whitefield ashram and demanded that Baba appear and be interviewed by them. The objective of the outing appears to have been no more than creating a public spectacle. The rationalists seemed to bask more in their self importance than in wishing seriously to examine Sathya Sai’s psychic phenomena. Otherwise, they would have adopted a more conciliatory approach. When Sai Baba declined to indulge the whim of the delegation, to the VC’s chagrin, instead of depleting the numbers who went to Sai Baba, public sympathy led to an increase. As if to rub salt in his rationalist wounds, the vice chancellors who followed him happened to be Sai Devotees. When Sathya Sai started his own university at Puttaparthi, the chancellor naturally was Sathya Sai himself. Within a decade, this institution for higher learning has become one of India’s leading universities. There is something profoundly symbolic in the different ways these two figures have approached life’s mysteries. Dr Narasimhaiah, as an earnest intellectual, reached the pinnacle of academic achievement, yet due to his singularly graceless lack of regard for those who did not share his crusading zeal, he failed to move his fellow men. By contrast, the half-educated villager Sathya Sai won over the world with his greater depth of understanding. In addressing the needs of the heart he demonstrated that most people can distinguish between fine-sounding words and inborn wisdom.

My Response: As one can see, Bill Aitken’s views are sober, clear and well-thought out. They are not mere “denial” and “deflection” as Ex-Devotees would have others believe. In 2002, Sathya Sai Baba’s University was the only University in India to receive an A++ rating by the NAAC. In 2007, Sathya Sai Baba’s University was one of two Universities throughout India to receive an A++ rating from the NAAC (Ref).

Bill Aitken: It is interesting to observe the rationalist’s opinion of his own worth and the question arises as to why these people, with so much to teach mankind, spend time seeking to expose fraud in others. Surely, the simplest way to prove Sai Baba’s limitations is for critics like Dr. Narasimhaiah to exceed Baba’s charitable works with their own. When they attract thirty million of their fellow men to their message they have every right to demand that the world take them more seriously.

Writing books against Sai Baba or seeking to tarnish his reputation on the Internet might merit an audience if the authors of these grievances possessed some locus standi in the world of philanthropy. If they had done a thousandth part of what Sathya Sai has accomplished in furthering the welfare of humanity, we would be justified in taking their complaints seriously and consider investigating whether pure water can flow from a polluted spring. The critics belong to the category of intellectuals who cannot face the reality of the spirit and desperately want to explain it away. They are haunted by the truth Sathya Sai embodies and wish to negate a presence that millions of ordinary people regard as the most beautiful evidence they have of life’s ultimate meaning. What is common to all the critics is a boundless contempt for the affections of the common citizen in his or her choice of religious expression. It is to heal these perverse perceptions that the masters of all faiths have arrived amongst us. Sai Baba’s reply to the critics is that whatever miracles happen are not due to his human form but because of compassion and love that made it their tool.

My Response: Critic’s only flair is in their nostrils. They have been unable to attain an iota of reverence, respect, praise or unconditional love that Sathya Sai Baba receives on a daily basis from Presidents of India, Prime Ministers, highly educated individuals, foreigners and common Indian villagers.

Bill Aitken’s observations and insights about the Sai Controversy are reasonable, objective, intelligent and accurate. It is not surprising that Ex-Devotees have waged their own malicious smear-campaigns against Bill Aitken (as they have done with Sathya Sai Baba, Sai Devotees and Pro-Sai Activists).

For example, Brian Steel, Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard reject everything Bill Aitken had to say despite the fact that they have no verifiable, credible or legal documentation to support their erroneous allegations against Sathya Sai Baba. Critics wage their smear campaigns on the internet because know they would be whollyunconvincing in a legal setting where they would be subjected to critical cross examination.

As a matter of fact, The Rahm Family attempted to file an absurd lawsuit against the Sathya Sai Baba Society Of America and the purposely suppressed information about Alaya Rahm being a drug addict and alcoholic for 6-10 years was made known. This is the type of relevant information that critical cross examination would reveal. This information sheds an entirely different light on the credibility of Alaya Rahm. Needless to say, this information was fanatically guarded and hidden by the Rahm Family, Anti-Sai Activists and the media.

Bill Aitken’s observations about the Secret Swami Documentary (in which Alaya Rahm was the primary interviewee) was particularly insightful:

Bill Aitken: The latest in these so called exposes is a BBC documentary whose agenda was so predetermined to denigrate Baba that it stooped to the unethical use of a spy camera. In a last farcical gesture, the producer hired some roadside entertainers to attempt to simulate Baba’s chamatkar. The result is so ludicrous that it leaves the viewer wondering as to who is funding this bizarre display of hostile reporting. The BBC is ultimately governed by the Anglican establishment, and churches in the west are losing out financially to the appeal of the Sai Baba movement. As a commercial broadcaster, the BBC’s opting for sleaze would have the dual advantage of discrediting a rival as well as getting good audience rating. The Church of England can have no objection to programmes that weaken perceived threats—like the papacy or Hindu holy men—to its (declining) influence in the world. Posing as a lion in Asia, the BBC is a mouse in Britain. It dare not criticise public icons like the Queen, who happens to be the supremo of the Anglican Church. (Reference)

Critics have accused Bill Aitken of making a “blanket dismissal of all criticism as inherently baseless” and that he suffers from a “blind spot” regarding “serious Internet criticisms of Sathya Sai Baba that have not been refuted”. Needless to say, critics wallow in utter denial and attempt to deceive the general public about the fact that the “internet criticisms of Sathya Sai Baba”have been thoroughly refuted and addressed by Joe Moreno on his saisathyasai.com website.